I’m not quite sure that the movie “Frank” is about any one thing, in particular. It engages with a lot of ideas that struggling and aspiring musicians deal with, such as inherent genius, hard work, tragic beginnings, and what it takes to be creatively successful, but it doesn’t have anything specific to say about any of them. Unlike most films, though, Frank doesn’t suffer from its shotgun approach to the complexities of the creative process. Instead it feels like an artist venting about said frustrations through a quirky, compelling yarn centered around a man in a paper mache mask.

Despite the marketing focus on Frank (the masked man) himself, the protagonist of the film is actually Domhnall Gleason’s Jon Burroughs, a struggling keyboardist who lives with his parents and spends much of his free time “writing music,” or more accurately, people-watching on the beaches of Ireland. The film’s first act is strangely similar to another Domhnall Gleason movie, actually; like in Ex Machina, his every-man character is swept away to a remote location with a genius figure who hand-picked him as a collaborator. From there, though, Frank takes a much different path.

For much of the film, Frank serves as a rorschach test for the other characters, a way to reflect on their own feelings of art and failure. Because the faceless Frank is presented as more of a figure than an actual human being, the characters can project whatever they want onto him. Jon sees him as a friend and a kindred spirit, the mentally unstable Don sees him as a hyper-sane musical genius, and Clara perhaps sees him most clearly as a sensitive man who needs to be protected from the world at large. The mystery surrounding Frank lends each scene between him and Jon an energy and a tension, as it’s difficult to conflate the unassuming, welcoming manner of his behavior with the reverence everybody else seems to have towards him.

But enough talk about characters and figures and artistic failings. On a pure entertainment level, Frank is a lot of fun. While the look and tone of the film is grounded in reality, it’s not afraid to get weird or break from reality when it wants to. Jon’s entrance into Frank’s world alone borders on the absurd, and the surreality is only supplemented by the way that Frank seems to exhibit supernatural abilities, from inspired improvisational songwriting to superhuman feats of persuasion. The original music also achieves an impressive balance here, almost always centered around simple or silly ideas, but powerful and playful enough that we can see why people look up to Frank.There’s a sense of whimsy and magical realism throughout that makes this a very enjoyable movie while also underlining the unachievable, otherworldly nature of true artistic genius.

Some of this is intentionally undermined in the film’s final act, which I’d prefer to leave unspoiled here. But the bottom line is that Frank is a unique film, simultaneously broadly entertaining and intellectually challenging. It’s clever, funny, knowingly obtuse, and certainly worth a view for those who appreciate original cinema.